Tae recent history of the Transit dues question has not bee altogether an-instructive, as affording an instance of how steady pressure, combined ° with right and reason, may in the end prove successful, however'seemingly hopeless the task, The history is, however, too fresh our readers' memories to need more than a few passing allusions. The want of some regulating system was felt, even in the early days of our inter= course with China; it was mentioned in the report drawn up by the Board of Trade before the outbreak of the firat war, and in the treaty which followed that war it became-a special stipulation. That treaty provided for the admission of British goods to the interior, in Euglish or China hands, according to a rate to be fixed. The Chinese authorities, once the treaty was signed and ratified, looked upon its stipulations as a thing of the past, and refased to nocede'to the requirements of the clause or to give Aefinite information as to what really were the imposts to which foreign goods were linble; and the British Superintendent seems to have quietly concurred in this shelving of the matter. Once, indeed, we hear of it, and that was at the time of the strange treaty of the Bogue, when Sir Henry Pottinger issued a notification that, as he had ascertained that the duties levied on foreign goods proceedi interior were reasonable in amount, the then Chinese rates of internal duty should stand for the limit named in the treaty. Sothematterrested till the treaty of Tientsin, which, making no mention of the i of the Bogue, restored the original reading of th agreement. Since that time, i ly necessary to add there has been an uphill strife to obtain the clear reco; tion of the privilege granted. The British Representatives Lave unfortunately been men of too narrow views to take in the whole of the measure; they could not see the forest for the trees, and put down the requests of the mercantile body as the offapting of unenlightened and unscrupulous sefishness. Not being able to grasp the fact that merchauta desired the good of the. trade rather than the private pelf of. individuals, they directed their efforts to suppressing' this supposed act of aggression. British merchants were taunted with their folly and with their grasping spirit. They were told that the former had led to their loss of the internal trade of the country, which was rapidly reverting to native hands, and that the latter was exemplified in their desire to wring still farther advantages for themselves, at the expense of the native trader. Ib was in vain that the body of merchants pointed to their memorials, which complained solely of the burdens on trade, and that they deprecated any such revision as would have a partial tendency in upholding one interest at the expense of the other. The answer of the Minister was ever the same: " You have had privileges conferred on you by the treaty of Tientsin; you Lave made such bad use of these that the Chinese traders alone reap the beaefit; and now you come to me to demand more, in order to right yourselves and recover a trade your stupidity
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.